Hairo

My notations are "English", Hairo, quoted source, /phonemic/, [phonetic]. The latter two are written in X-SAMPA, with the following deviations from the standard: Primary and secondary stress are represented as /'/ and /,/ as opposed to the standard /"/ and /%/, for the sake of legibility. Diaereses (ä ö ü), esszett (ß) and circumflexes (â ê î ô û) are used on this site; adjust the character encoding if they do not display correctly.

There is some disagreement about whether Hairo's postpositions should also be considered cases (as e.g. in Finnish), since some sources fuse them with the preceding nouns, or link them with hyphen-like glyphs. Furthermore, two particular postpositions experience vowel changes to harmonize with the noun: hrol os "in the house", mern es "in the field"; ucht ur "with a hammer", bai ir "with the mouth". Seeing how the scope of a single instance can stretch over a complex phrase, though, the status as a postposition should be justified: mern hrol os {field house in} "in field and house".

The above example illustrates how juxtaposed nouns of the same case (absolutive or ergative) are taken to be a list rather than a single entity as in English ("field house" clearly refers to a house on a field rather than a house and a field). For one noun to modify another, it must appear in the genitive case: merne hrol {field:GEN house} "field house". The genitive is a bit of a misnomer, seeing as its meaning is not primarily possession, but description. A more accurate modern term would be construct case. The convention goes back to Vogelin's grammar, where he also misleadingly refers to the ergative and absolutive cases as nominative and accusative, for lack of non-Latinate grammar vocabulary.

As previously mentioned, the genitive case is formed very regularly according to the following rule.

If the absolutive form ends in -a, -e, -o or -â, –ê, -ô, add the suffix -n.
Otherwise, append the suffix -e. Note that this always adds a syllable to the word.

As for the ergative derivation, most words can be attributed to one of the following inflection paradigms; however, it is impossible to predict the forms of a noun from its base form alone. A lexical entry must always include at least the absolutive and ergative forms.

Diphthongization: A long vowel splits into a diphthong in the ergative. Examples: gwîn, gwein, gwîne "cattle", fân, faun, fâne "young woman", horâd, horaid, horâde "summer", hêr, hair, hêre "(male) god".
Cluster splitting: A final consonant cluster is separated by a replica of the previous vowel. Examples: brand, branad, brande "edge, blade", terg, tereg, terge "snail", shum, shumun, shume "gold" (from the stem *shumn?).
Lengthening: A short vowel in the final syllable, especially if no consonant is following, turns into a long one. Example: hirha, hirhâ, hirhan "deer", echal, echâl, echale "joy of victory, exhilaration; boastfulness".
Zero derivation: The ergative is identical to the absolutive. This happens only with inanimate objects not expected to "act". Examples: dêm, dêm, dême "food; meal", choin, choin, choine "forest".
Insertion: A vowel o is inserted after the stressed vowel. Examples: rhûd, rhuod, rhûde "grass, herb", stufa, stuofa, stufan "rune, letter".
Suffixion: A vowel i or u is appended to the end of the word. This replaces a pre-existing final -e. Since this derivation is the simplest to use, it is applied to loan words, foreign names and verbal nouns. Examples: konrad, konradi, konrade "Conrad (proper name)", fhaid, fhaidi, fhaide "dance, dancing".

2.2. Adjective Morphology

Adjectives only have a single form, they do not inflect for case. They cannot be used as noun phrase heads by themselves, but have to be subordinated to the "dummy" noun lhâ, lheu, lhân. Example: rêg "white", rêg lhâ "a white one".

Several productive endings exist to convert nouns and verbs into adjectives. All adjectives are also the base forms of verbs meaning "to be (adjective)". Example: ûrê "red", ûrê hlefarn "a red dress", an ûrê "it is red".

2.3. Personal Pronouns

The default personal pronouns of Hairo comprise four grammatical persons and all three core cases, but no number. There are, however, contractions of idiomatic expressions available to specify number if necessary. The singular, paucal and categorical forms are composed of a genitive pronoun and the nouns chud, chudu, chude "self, proper", min, minu, mine "together" and warn, waran, warne "clan, people", respectively.

The fourth person is used to refer to another third person entity than the one already described with the third person pronoun. The third and fourth person pronouns are often taken to mean "the former" and "the latter".

	Case\Person	1	2	3	4
Default	ABS	hu	se	an	in
	ERG	ou	ai	na	ne
	GEN	hun	sin	ane	ine

Singular	ABS	huchud	sechud	angud	ingud
	ERG	huchtu	sechtu	achtu	ichtu
	GEN	huchte	sechte	achte	ichte

Paucal	ABS	humin	semin	amin	imin
	ERG	humnu	semnu	amnu	imnu
	GEN	humne	semne	amne	imne

Categorical	ABS	huwarn	sewarn	amwarn	imwarn
	ERG	hufran	sefran	ambran	imbran
	GEN	hurne	serne	ambrane	imbrane

Example: hun hrol "my/our house", huchte hrol "the house of me alone", humne hrol "the house of us together", hurne hrol "the house of us all, of our kind".

Thanks to the vector construction described in the next chapter, the personal pronouns are not used as often as in IE languages in general.

2.4. Vector Morphology

The vector is an auxiliary verb inflecting for the person of both actor and patient, as well as aspect. All finite verb forms are built with an instance of the vector. Since all other verbs only exist in the form of verbal nouns, one could well regard the vector as the sole true verb of the Hairo language (see Pleigh, [4]). One could gloss it as "to do; to be".

No tenses in the classical sense exist in Hairo — a narration of past, present or future events would all use the same verb forms. However, three aspects are distinguished: simple, perfect and imminent. There are separate vector forms for every aspect.

	ABS\ERG	0	1	2	3	4
SIMP	0	a	ou	ai	na	ne
	1	hu	fû	whi	fta	fti
	2	se	shu	shî	sta	sti
	3	an	whan	chan	nân	nen
	4	in	whin	chin	nain	nîn

PERF	0	ê	tau	tei	nhâ	nhî
	1	whê	ftau	ftei	ftâ	ftî
	2	sê	stau	stei	stâ	stî
	3	ên	antu	ante	anâ	anî
	4	în	intu	inte	inâ	inî

IMMI	0	rho	rhû	rhai	rhona	rhone
	1	hu rho	hu rhû	hu rhai	hu rhona	hu rhone
	2	se rho	se rhû	se rhai	se rhona	se rhone
	3	an rho	an rhû	an rhai	an rhona	an rhone
	4	in rho	in rhû	in rhai	in rhona	in rhone

The zero person inflection is used wherever a third person argument is either explicitly mentioned in the same sentence, or the argument slot is not used at all. The third and fourth persons are again used to distinguish two different third person participants in the narration. Examples:

Gwein rhûd a dom. {bull:ERG grass:ABS 0>0 eat} "The bull eats the grass."
Gwein a dom. {bull:ERG 0>0 eat} "The bull eats."
Rhûd a dom. {grass:ABS 0>0 eat} "The grass is eaten."
Gwein in dom. {bull:ERG 0>4 eat} "The bull eats it (the latter)."
Rhûd na dom. {grass:ABS 3>0 eat} "It (the former) eats the grass."
Nain dom. {3>4 eat} "The former eats the latter."
Nin dom. {4>4 eat} "The latter eats itself."

Gwein rhûd ê dom. {bull:ERG grass:ABS 0>0:PER eat} "The bull has eaten the grass."
Gwein rhûd rho dom. {bull:ERG grass:ABS 0>0:IMM eat} "The bull is about to eat the grass."

The simple aspect is the most commonly used, corresponding to the simple tenses in English. The perfect insists on completed verb action, and imminent describes verb action just about to happen. Examples: dom "eat", whan dom "I eat it", antu dom "I have eaten it", an rhû dom "I am about to eat it".

2.5. Verbal Morphology

Since the vector takes all inflection upon itself in a finite verb phrase, only non-finite forms of the actual verbs are needed. Three types of verbal nouns are provided: the gerund, the participles (one for each verb aspect), and what Vogelin [2] calls the unit (Eynhaitt), which refers to an individual, countable instance of the verb action, as opposed to the gerund, which describes the verb action in a more general, uncountable way. All verbal nouns have two forms, representing the viewpoints of the actor (ergative argument) and patient (absolutive argument), respectively.

Verbal nouns are derived by a mostly regular and simple affixional paradigm. The choice of vowel in some endings depend on the last vowel of the verb stem, though. A table is given to show which stem vowels demand which ending vowels. If the last syllable of a verb stem contains a diphthong, the second component (the glide) determines the ending vowel.

	Gerund	Participle			Unit
		Simple	Perfect	Imminent
Actor	–	– (1)n	– one	rhe – (2)n	– ach
Patient	– âs	– arne	– ar	rhe – ar	– rach

Stem Vowel	a	e	i	o	u
Vowel (1)	â	î	î	û	û
Vowel (2)	a	i	i	u	u

Examples: dom "to eat", domûn "eater", domone "one who has eaten", rhedomun "about to eat"; faild "to hit", faildâs "to be hit", faildach "a hit (scored)", faildrach "a hit (suffered)".

Important: Only the base form (actor gerund) is used to form finite verb phrases; it is ungrammatical to use the patient gerund together with a vector to form a passive. There is no passive voice in Hairo.

The participles are special nouns in that they can also function as adjectives without a morphological change. They are often used in place of a relative clause: hun hurf domûn carg {1:GEN semolina eater raven} "the raven who eats my semolina".

The imminent participles are often used idiomatically to express habit, tendency or destiny: ferd "to drink alcohol", rheferdin "prone to drinking, drunkard, alcoholic"; dom "to eat", rhedomar "destined to be eaten, edible".

3. Syntax

3.1. Noun Phrases

tbc

Appendix: Pronunciation Help

Hairo employs several sounds not present in English and many other languages. For readers unfamiliar with the IPA or unable to pronounce the foreign sounds, we give the closest approximations from the English sound stock.

The short vowels a e i o u sound much like the Spanish ones. Probably the best English approximations are the vowels in "pa, pet, pit, pot, put". It is important to pronounce a just as brief as the other short vowels.
The long vowels â ê î ô û correspond well to the ones in the German words "Bad, Beet, Lied, Boot, Sud". In general, they are identical to their short counterparts except for duration, which should betwice as long. Only e/ê differ in quality, too. Under no circumstances should the woefully misnamed English "long vowels" in "pay, peat, pike, boat, puke" be used for â ê î ô û. The vowels in English "pa, paid, peat, boat, boot" are loose approximations. The ê and ô should not glide off into a trailing "y" and "w" sound as in English, since they would then sound indistinguishable from the diphthongs ei and ou.
The diphthongs ai ei oi au ou sound exactly like their component short vowels put together into one syllable. The diphthongs in English "pike, pay, boy, bout, boat" are good approximations. Likewise, eu is simply e+u, but has no English equivalent.
The consonants t d p b f m n h have the same values as in English. G always has the "hard" pronunciation, i.e. that in "goat", even before e and i. W is always a consonant as in "away", not part of a vowel spelling as in "awful". S is always voiceless as in "hiss", not voiced as in "his".
R is rolled as in Spanish. L is light as in German, French, Spanish and in fact most other languages, not dark as in English, though the English values probably would still have been understood, albeit considered ridiculous.
Rh lh wh nh mh are voiceless, aspirated versions of r l w n m. The former two and latter two correspond to rh ll nh mh in Welsh, the third to the "wh" in "whale" as spoken by people who distinguish "whale" from "wail" in speaking. Rh can very loosely be likened to "sh" in "shy", lh to "sl" in "sly". Nh mh are "snorted" versions of n m.
Fh and sh are simply intense aspired versions of f and s as in English "offhand", "misheard". Do by all means resist the urge to pronounce sh as in English "show".
Ch is the guttural sound [X] found in Scottish "loch", Swiss German "Chuchichästli" and Klingon "Hol". Uvulo-velar [x_-] as in German "Bach" and velar [x] as in Russian "dukh" are an acceptable alternative. The consonants in English "he" or "key" are not, since they are Hairo phonemes in their own right (spelt h and k).

References

[1]	Weinmann S.M., Bürkli P., Nef D. et al., 1921, "Der Heirische Codex Domesticus", Pestalozzi Verlag Zürich
[2]	Hesseling V., Schmidtmayr K. et al., 1904, "Annotierte Manuscripten von Conrad Vogelin", Universitätsverlag Hamburg
[3]	Leinbach Th. R., Neveu J. P., 1964, "Hairo Morphology Revisited", Cambridge University Press
[4]	Pleigh E., 1971, "History's Loneliest Verb", Journal of Archaeolinguistics, 17, 89–95

Short			Long
a	/a/	[A]	â	/a:/	[A:]
e	/e/	[E], [3\]?	ê	/e:/	[e:]
i	/i/	[i]	î	/i:/	[i:]
o	/o/	[o]	ô	/o:/	[o:]
u	/u/	[u]	û	/u:/	[u:]

Alveodental			Labial			Guttural
t	/t_h/	[t_h]	p	/p_h/	[p_h]	k	/k_h/	[k_h]
d	/t/	[t]	b	/p/	[p]	g	/k/	[k]
s	/s/	[s]	f	/f/	[f]	ch	/x/	[X]
sh	/s_h/	[s_h]	fh	/f_h/	[f_h]	h	/h/	[h]
n	/n/	[n]	m	/m/	[m]
nh	/n_h/	[n_0_h]	mh	/m_h/	[m_0_h]

Miscellaneous
l	/l/	[l]	lh	/l_0/	[K]
r	/r/	[r]	rh	/r_0/	[r_0_h]
w	/w/	[w]	wh	/w_0/	[W]

Hairo

Contents

1. Phonology

1.1. Vowels

1.2. Consonants

1.3. Stress

2. Morphology

2.1. Noun Morphology